Famous Stories, Beloved Characters

Question: Which of these people is not a character in Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time?

Answer: Lyra Belacqua is the feisty young heroine of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, a contemporary fantasy trilogy which is in part a retelling of Milton’s classic epic poem Paradise Lost.

Question: Which of these birds plays a key role in Rime of the Ancient Mariner?

Answer: In Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a sailor slays an innocent albatross and then is forced by his shipmates to wear the bird around his neck as a symbol of his sin.

Question: What is the name of the pirate in Treasure Island?

Answer: The villainous pirate of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Treasure Island is called Long John Silver.

Question: Who is the little girl alongside Peter Pan in J.M. Barrie’s play?

Answer: Wendy is the female lead in J.M. Barrie’s play Peter Pan. The name Wendy became very popular after the play was first staged.

Question: Rikki-Tikki-Tavi is a:

Answer: Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, the hero of a story in Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Books, is a mongoose.

Question: What is the name of Bill Sikes’s dog?

Answer: Bull’s-eye is the maltreated animal belonging to Bill Sikes, the brutal and menacing antagonist in Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist.

Question: What color hair does Anne Shirley have?

Answer: Anne Shirley, the heroine of L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables series, is (to her eternal woe) a redhead.

Question: Where do Heidi and the Alm-Uncle live?

Answer: Joanna Spyri’s book Heidi, published in 1880–81, is about a young girl and her grandfather, the "Alm-Uncle," who live together in near-isolation in the Swiss Alps.